Yesterday, really, but I've decided to turn my initial rant in The Server Room into a full-fledged thread. Frankly, I could use some outside perspective, both on the situation and how I message it, since the person I'll be reporting to knows about as much about the situation in my department as any of you do.

Some background, as brief as possible. I work in I.T. for a medium-sized company. When I was hired 2.5 years ago, the company had 100 employees, and I was the third member of I.T., which consisted of the manager and two desktop support guys (of which I was one). That role lasted six months. I've spent the last two years taking on more and more systems administrator-level duties, to the point that, for the past year, those have accounted for more than 80% of my day.

In that time, the company has grown by more than 50%, and I.T. has grown not at all. Additionally, we rolled out several new core services, further increasing our workload. This resulted in everyone working more and more overtime (banked as lieu for my fellow support monkey and I) and shedding less-important duties, to the point that, as of last week, recurring duties either not being done or being done via overtime amount to 144 hours each month; basically an entire extra person's worth. This doesn't take into account project work, which is significant, as we're in the middle of a major refresh of our core infrastructure and user hardware.

And that's before my manager decided to quit. Not that I blame him: he wanted to go back to purely technical work, and escape the managerial bullshit that goes on at this company. In his absence, I'll be taking over all of his non-managerial functions, of which I'm already doing about 70% (I create the business cases, put together our budget proposals, etc.)

I do not want my boss' job, for all the same reasons he ultimately chose to escape it.

To address the manpower shortage, the plan has been to add a proper Systems Administrator role (which my manager has told me privately was created with the intention of giving it to me, should I want it), as well as to back-fill the role for which I still hold the title but do few of the duties. The sysadmin slot was approved by our board, but then put on hold for reasons beyond my understanding.

Once my boss departs, I'm the only one left with any infrastructure knowledge at all; this became apparent when my manager created a list of his duties as well as who (if anyone) could fill them after his departure, and 60% of them devolved to me alone, with a further 20% shared between the other desktop guy and myself. Since we're already down to just the most essential infrastructure projects and maintenance, it wouldn't take more than a week or two of these not being taken care of for services to begin to fail.

So I've decided that this is either time for me to finally gain the title and salary that go with the responsibilities that I've had for the past two years (and am about to gain even more of), or it's time for me to move on to other opportunities.

Move. You'll never get the pay you should be getting where you are now.

The role I want, with the salary I want (truth be told, about 10% higher a salary than I would have asked for outright) survived the trials of budgetary approval. The executives approved it, as did the board (at the listed salary level). It was delayed--along with a dozen other, unrelated positions--until after an important business milestone is reached this coming summer.

If not for my manager leaving, I wouldn't expect this to change. But he is leaving, which means the company will no longer be paying his salary, and can just as easily prioritize a sysadmin as a new manager. The resulting increase in my salary would only be 25% the cost of finding a new manager in the same time frame, if that were even possible. My raise plus the salary of my back-fill would still only result in 75% of the cost of hiring a new manager. So it's definitely not a question of the money being available.

You might very well be right, and none of the above refutes that. But it does, at least, give me hope that the business can give me the job I want, at the pay I want, should it so choose. I'm not going to toil away for another two years hoping, though; this is either going to happen rather quickly, or I'll be gone by summer. I'm already making contingency plans along those lines.

Move. You'll never get the pay you should be getting where you are now.

The role I want, with the salary I want (truth be told, about 10% higher a salary than I would have asked for outright) survived the trials of budgetary approval. The executives approved it, as did the board (at the listed salary level). It was delayed--along with a dozen other, unrelated positions--until after an important business milestone is reached this coming summer.

If not for my manager leaving, I wouldn't expect this to change. But he is leaving, which means the company will no longer be paying his salary, and can just as easily prioritize a sysadmin as a new manager. The resulting increase in my salary would only be 25% the cost of finding a new manager in the same time frame, if that were even possible. My raise plus the salary of my back-fill would still only result in 75% of the cost of hiring a new manager. So it's definitely not a question of the money being available.

You might very well be right, and none of the above refutes that. But it does, at least, give me hope that the business can give me the job I want, at the pay I want, should it so choose. I'm not going to toil away for another two years hoping, though; this is either going to happen rather quickly, or I'll be gone by summer. I'm already making contingency plans along those lines.

And in the meantime, they're going to dump all that work on you NOW without any change in pay.

Sorry, waiting till summer, even with contingency plans, is a fool's errand. Either they realize they are vastly understaffed and treading very dangerous grounds in regards to their internal systems, and make adjustments immediately, or they will make more excuses when summer rolls around (most likely, give you the title and not the pay).

He just found out yesterday, and today was his first meeting with my boss in which he discovered just how much work will land on my shoulders. I'm told he expressed some incredulity about how I'm apparently responsible for so much and yet he's only talked to me half a dozen times in the year he's been with the company.

Also, I'm trying to spread out my updates to avoid having a giant wall of text greet anyone who visits my thread

EDIT: And, when it comes to the EVP, it's not a matter of him going to bat for me. He's #2 in the company, and is forceful (and persuasive) enough that he often gets his way even when the CEO disagrees. As a general rule, what he wants to happen, happens. Since (for better or for worse) I don't have a relationship with him, my goal is to enlist more-senior help to get my plan (or even me) in front of him.

Move. You'll never get the pay you should be getting where you are now.

The role I want, with the salary I want (truth be told, about 10% higher a salary than I would have asked for outright) survived the trials of budgetary approval. The executives approved it, as did the board (at the listed salary level). It was delayed--along with a dozen other, unrelated positions--until after an important business milestone is reached this coming summer.

If not for my manager leaving, I wouldn't expect this to change. But he is leaving, which means the company will no longer be paying his salary, and can just as easily prioritize a sysadmin as a new manager. The resulting increase in my salary would only be 25% the cost of finding a new manager in the same time frame, if that were even possible. My raise plus the salary of my back-fill would still only result in 75% of the cost of hiring a new manager. So it's definitely not a question of the money being available.

You might very well be right, and none of the above refutes that. But it does, at least, give me hope that the business can give me the job I want, at the pay I want, should it so choose. I'm not going to toil away for another two years hoping, though; this is either going to happen rather quickly, or I'll be gone by summer. I'm already making contingency plans along those lines.

And in the meantime, they're going to dump all that work on you NOW without any change in pay.

Sorry, waiting till summer, even with contingency plans, is a fool's errand. Either they realize they are vastly understaffed and treading very dangerous grounds in regards to their internal systems, and make adjustments immediately, or they will make more excuses when summer rolls around (most likely, give you the title and not the pay).

It's always about the money. Don't kid yourself.

There's nothing obligating me to do that extra work if I don't see that concrete steps are being taken to improve the situation. I'm perfectly willing to simply continue with my current duties (or, if necessary, step back to my titular duties) while I concentrate on job-searching. My current manager has already agreed to provide a reference (and actively help me find new sysadmin leads) regardless of what happens next, so I don't need my current employer for anything more than a paycheck until I move on.

My plan might make slightly more sense if I just add the post covering today, so I'm going to go ahead and do that. Apologies in advance for the wordiness.

Yesterday afternoon I learned that the remains of the I.T. department will be realigned under the Director of Quality (to whom I.S. also reports to temporarily, with the departure of their own manager). He is a man who appreciates people who are plain-spoken, direct, and most of all who already have a solution in mind when they bring a problem to him.

He has no idea the extent to which I.T. is understaffed, and as long as I'm to be the bearer of bad news on that front, I figured I might as well have a solution for him. Since he's fond of business proposals, I wrote one up. The bare bones of which are this:

1) Leave I.T. aligned under him for the next several months; with me taking on all of the non-managerial tasks, the burden on the director should be minimal (I already share responsibility for determining strategic direction and daily priorities with my boss, and there's precious little managing for him to do beyond that)2) Immediately push forward the Systems Administrator role. I make no bones about considering myself the best candidate (two years in the job, already trained, etc.), but am completely willing to go through a formal interview process anyway3) Upon completion of that, start interviewing for a second desktop support person (technically my back-fill) as soon as possible, as it should be an easier role to fill externally than sysadmin4) At some point in the future, hire a new manager of I.T. (and possibly I.S.) and return them to a separate department under the previous reporting structure

The official plan puts #4 at the top, but it's going to take several months to fill that position, and doing so will be of limited functional benefit to the department anyway.

This afternoon the director stopped by, commented that he'd seen the above-mentioned manager's responsibility list and delegates (70% of which is me), and said that he'd like to sit down with me and talk about the department, so we're having lunch tomorrow. He said in advance that he wants me to be as plain-spoken and brutally honest as possible, and all of his direct reports confirm that he very much means that; he always wants to hear the truth, not because he can always fix problems, but because he always wants to understand them.

So in tomorrow's lunch meeting, I plan to tell him what the business proposal very carefully does not say: that, once the manager leaves, our limited resources will require us to enter triage mode, focusing on the most critical needs and simply rejecting most non-work-stopping user issues and the vast majority of project work (some of which is integral to business growth, but would have to be secondary to keeping the business running), and that even then, we'll be working even more overtime than we already are. Also, that unless the sysadmin slot goes forward very soon, I will be following my manager's example and departing for better opportunities.

And by "very soon" I mean that I'm going to be expecting a commitment on the sysadmin slot within 2-3 weeks (i.e. interviews completed, offer pending or extended), and having it finalized and interviewing for my back-fill starting 2-3 weeks after that. I don't mean it to be a threat, because it's simply a statement of my intentions: I've been doing this work for two years now without the title and salary to show for it, and if they expect me to take on more responsibility without rectifying that, they're in for a serious disappointment.

I plan to start job-searching this coming Monday, in part because I truly don't care which direction this goes. If the business decides not to take immediate steps to improve the situation in I.T., I'm perfectly willing to simply leave and let them sleep in the bed they've made. If the business will make the changes I need, then I'm more than happy to stay, because I really do love the work I do, just not the inability to do more than half of what needs to be done.

I think I have three things going for me:1) the Director of Quality already has a good understanding as to just how large a percentage of critical tasks will fall to me and me alone after next Friday, and my sense is that he'll do everything in his power to improve the situation2) I have a very good relationship with the Director of HR, who has considerable influence on the CEO. If I can find the right way to approach her, I can probably count on having her as an advocate for my promotion and hiring an extra body3) My proposal will cost less money in the short term (where we're trying to conserve money) than hiring a new I.T. manager would; my promotion and a back-fill would only amount to 75% of the salary burden compared to simply replacing my boss, and "my way" would bring a significantly greater functional improvement to our services

There's nothing obligating me to do that extra work if I don't see that concrete steps are being taken to improve the situation. I'm perfectly willing to simply continue with my current duties (or, if necessary, step back to my titular duties) while I concentrate on job-searching. My current manager has already agreed to provide a reference (and actively help me find new sysadmin leads) regardless of what happens next, so I don't need my current employer for anything more than a paycheck until I move on.

My plan might make slightly more sense if I just add the post covering today, so I'm going to go ahead and do that. Apologies in advance for the wordiness.

Careful. Unless you are in a union, most places aren't going to take "that's not my job" as an answer. You could (unlikely given the rest of your information) find yourself out of a job with that kind of argument.

Don't apologize for the extra words; more information will mean better advice (hopefully!)

Has the EVP talked to you? Is that who your former manager reported to? If so, I wouldn't look for another channel; just go to him and lay out the problems AND solutions.

There's nothing obligating me to do that extra work if I don't see that concrete steps are being taken to improve the situation. I'm perfectly willing to simply continue with my current duties (or, if necessary, step back to my titular duties) while I concentrate on job-searching. My current manager has already agreed to provide a reference (and actively help me find new sysadmin leads) regardless of what happens next, so I don't need my current employer for anything more than a paycheck until I move on.

My plan might make slightly more sense if I just add the post covering today, so I'm going to go ahead and do that. Apologies in advance for the wordiness.

Careful. Unless you are in a union, most places aren't going to take "that's not my job" as an answer. You could (unlikely given the rest of your information) find yourself out of a job with that kind of argument.

I know that one of the possibilities is that they would simply let me go on the spot, despite how problematic that would be for them. Any chance of drawing such a line in the sand is at least a couple of weeks away (my boss does have one more week left, after all). If I were to go that route, my goal would shift to finding new work as soon as possible; there would be no staying with my current company after that, regardless of what they offered me. Since I plan to start my job-search this week, I don't anticipate much hardship in the event of such a firing. I'd weather a few weeks of unemployment without undue difficulty, especially since I'd have nearly a month of banked vacation and lieu time that would be cashed out.

Quote:

Has the EVP talked to you? Is that who your former manager reported to? If so, I wouldn't look for another channel; just go to him and lay out the problems AND solutions.

I've previously considered this approach to be inappropriate for several reasons that may or may not be valid:1) He's very busy and extremely hard to get time with, even for his direct reports2) My former manager did report to him, and was (is) the most junior person to do so; all of his other direct reports are directors or (non-executive) vice presidents3) He and I only know each other in passing, and apparently he only found out today exactly how much responsibility I have4) He has no sense of humor and has been known to literally yell at his direct reports (my former manager included) if he feels that their performance is lacking or they're wasting his time5) I don't want to be perceived as doing an end run around the director to whom I'll be reporting until my former manager is replaced, especially since I want (and anticipate receiving) his help

Between #1 and #2 I would expect any request for time to be rebuffed and be redirected to the Director of Quality, to whom I'll report, simply as a function of how busy he is with Operations, which is critical to the continued existence of the company. Given that I've never done anything like what I'm planning on doing here, #4 makes me want to have a... dry run, I guess, in front of someone who will be easier to get on my side (my new director), and who has already expressed that this is an opportunity to raise my profile with the executives, and thus would likely be able to provide constructive criticism based on my first... performance, as it were.

If I had to deal with it, well, ever I would feel the same way. It's a part of why my 'old boss' is leaving. He's doing wonders as far as getting the Operations house in order, though, because he's broken the old culture of "promise the executives whatever they want to hear, even if you know you can't deliver it," in large part by yelling at those who over-promise. We've gone from Operations project timelines being off by months to completion rarely deviating from plans by more than a week.

I'm sure there are other, better ways he could have accomplished that, but I can't begrudge his results. Especially when I am (and plan to remain) insulated from his methods by a layer of management.

Well, that was quite the lunch meeting. The Director and EVP share, as their primary concern, the possibility that either of us remaining I.T. guys will leave, because not only can I.T. not run at all with only one person, but the one who leaves would be taking with them knowledge that would then be gone forever, because we document only a tiny fraction of what we do. I'm guessing that, if this works out for the better, someone sufficiently senior will finally force down the proper documentation practices that I've been struggling to implement since the day I started. Of course, that will require enough staff to have time to document and not just jump from fire to fire, but I digress.

The Director took my overview of the department fairly well in stride, given that apparently nobody outside of I.T. had the first clue as to what the situation was. He also accepted that I'm likely to move on if things aren't improved very soon. He also said that my business proposal doesn't go far enough; he wants to see an actual vision for both I.T. and I.S., not just for already-planned hires/replacements, but for exactly what roles I think the department should have. He wants an overview of where things are now, a vision of how things should be, and a plan to get there.

He wants a draft of this vision by Sunday night. If it's a good one (he doesn't know me well enough to know if such a thing is even in the scope of my capabilities), then at the Monday morning executive meeting, he'll tell the EVP that I have a proposal that should be listened to. And then... then I get put in a room with the EVP to make my proposal, either entirely alone (where, if I shine, I'll shine brightest) or with the director there too (for support if I need it). If the EVP buys into the vision and agrees with the urgency, he could start moving it forward that same day.

Good luck with the presentation. Hope you are working on it now so you don't have to work on Sunday...

Uh, so you hope he's not running from fire to fire with his already over-worked co-worker trying to cover the senior person's job as well? I'm not sure how much he's going to be able to put together during the work day... though it'd definitely be beneficial to have a rough draft done sooner than later so he can run it by the director a few times for revisions. Here's hoping that works out somehow!

I am indeed already working on the presentation now. One of the director's biggest complaints (apparently shared by the EVP) about my soon-to-be-ex-boss and the also-departed I.S. manager is that neither of them ever put any effort into a "big picture" idea of where their departments should go. I think this criticism is unfair because both of them were working 60+ hours a week on critical operations stuff, and as such had no time to think big. But he thinks that one has to make the time to think big, so for a couple of hours today, I let a few fires burn on, and started in on the presentation.

I also found the time to meet with my two remaining coworkers (in addition to the other guy in I.T., there's also one guy in I.S. trying to hold that whole fort down), so I could better understand where their pain-points are, what their workload is like, how understaffing will affect them (and thus, ultimately, the organization as a whole), and what their feelings are as far as how long they're willing to wait for change before simply leaving. The employment market here is pretty healthy right now, which just underscores the EVP's concern that any of us might choose to move on to greener pastures and leave the company in the lurch.

Speaking of which, one of the things that the director asked me at lunch was if I already have another offer lined up. I told him that I didn't, which was true... at least until 2:30 this afternoon. So now, two days after I updated my resume at the usual online haunts, I've already had one phone interview and a verbal offer extended for a job. It's only a six-month contract, but it's for a sysadmin slot, and they didn't even blink when I told them that the minimum salary I'd accept would be $(Current*1.4). I probably don't want this job, but the fact that it came so fast should mean that moving on will be easy.

Which I'm not going to come out and tell the EVP (or the director of HR, who's also getting antsy about one of us leaving), but nor will I lie to either of them if they ask. I don't believe in ultimatums, but I do believe in honesty being the best way to a sane policy. I want to stay, improve the situation, and contribute to a business that does something I believe in. But if I can't get the support of the business to help the business, then I'm perfectly willing to pack my things and move on to other challenges.

Why were they so completely unaware of the situation? Your boss didn't even have time to complain?

Don't tell them if you have an offer. The time between receiving an offer and deciding whether or not you want to take it is so brief that there is no need to drag them into the drama unless you decide to leave.

Both my boss and the I.S. manager did complain about the situation, and I know that their information was good, because I was the one who generated it in the first place. So I'm not sure if the failure was how they presented it, or that nobody cared enough to do more than pretend to listen at the time. If it's the latter, it's not that the powers that be are listening now; they're just looking at the same information (possibly seeing it in raw form for the first time) and coming to the inevitable conclusion.

A specific request for advice:I've both been counseled and independently desire to avoid making any ultimatums, at any stage of whatever's going to happen. However, much of the short-term part of my "vision" involves giving the remaining staff the recognition (read: title and salary) that's in line with their actual role and responsibilities. These recognition steps are spread out over the next few months, and their order and timing is simple: each happens 1-2 months before the person being recognized plans to leave if it doesn't happen.

Any plan that fails to recognize and work to prevent further staff attrition is doomed to failure, and the ramifications of that failure would be severe: the company would lose all support for one of three critical areas (infrastructure, operations, or ERP/collaboration). My only mention of this (seemingly) self-evident fact, in the five-page "vision," is the following paragraph, in the second of three "recognition" action items:

Quote:

This vision submits that the most effective manner in which to reduce turnover, especially at a time when skill redundancy varies between minimal and non-existent, is to recognize the added efforts and changing roles of existing staff. The creation and timing of the Senior I.S. Analyst position is intended for this purpose, as well as to align the new department in preparation for future growth.

My fault for using a passive voice and couching what I want to say too much. The EVP appreciates directness, so how about this:

Quote:

Further employee turnover would leave critical operational gaps, and the timing of the Senior I.S. Analyst position is intended to help avoid this possibility by recognizing the evolving roles of existing staff.

Yeah, the role itself has other goals; I was just addressing the timing of it, because that's where I expect objections to be focused. It's trying to find a more polite way to answer the question "Why now?" than with the blunt "Because if you wait much longer he's going to quit and then it's panic time."

I took the above edit and applied it to the whole proposal. So now I have a second draft that still says everything I want it to, and is 25% shorter.

I think this criticism is unfair because both of them were working 60+ hours a week on critical operations stuff, and as such had no time to think big. But he thinks that one has to make the time to think big, so for a couple of hours today, I let a few fires burn on, and started in on the presentation.

I think his criticism is fair. When you took a few hours today, did the forest burn down? Your boss could have done the same - and twice as much, since there were two of you then!

Do you by any chance have a copy of The Practice? You sound like you're hitting close to the mark on a lot of things, but are slightly off on key points. If you do not have it, buy a copy and get reading, it will help you at this job and all future jobs.

I think this criticism is unfair because both of them were working 60+ hours a week on critical operations stuff, and as such had no time to think big. But he thinks that one has to make the time to think big, so for a couple of hours today, I let a few fires burn on, and started in on the presentation.

I think his criticism is fair. When you took a few hours today, did the forest burn down? Your boss could have done the same - and twice as much, since there were two of you then!

This is a valid point. Perhaps then it's not surprising that both of them chose to leave for non-managerial roles.

Quote:

Do you by any chance have a copy of The Practice? You sound like you're hitting close to the mark on a lot of things, but are slightly off on key points. If you do not have it, buy a copy and get reading, it will help you at this job and all future jobs.

I keep hearing about that book but have not yet read it. So... just ordered it from Amazon; I'll expense it, and if I end up leaving the company I'll deed it to the poor fellow who replaces me.

Another thing that you could do to condense and clarify your proposal is to separate the points in the plan of action from their rationale. That would give you a short section up front with fairly direct steps to be taken, each of which can be phrased as straighforwardly as possible, and then longer prose explanations and justifications of each point. This may require a brief vision statement preceding the action plan, so that there's some high-level coherence to the document as a whole.

Another thing that you could do to condense and clarify your proposal is to separate the points in the plan of action from their rationale. That would give you a short section up front with fairly direct steps to be taken, each of which can be phrased as straighforwardly as possible, and then longer prose explanations and justifications of each point. This may require a brief vision statement preceding the action plan, so that there's some high-level coherence to the document as a whole.

I like the sound of this. I'm already back-loading a lot of supporting data into appendices (list of role responsibilities, current unfilled duties and pending project requirements, and a salary budget analysis through 2014), so perhaps the justification of the steps could fall into another appendix, or alternately a later section.

If that justification is pulled out of the main body, then what's left is basically a list of steps to take and when they should be taken. I'll play around with this.

Another thing that you could do to condense and clarify your proposal is to separate the points in the plan of action from their rationale. That would give you a short section up front with fairly direct steps to be taken, each of which can be phrased as straighforwardly as possible, and then longer prose explanations and justifications of each point. This may require a brief vision statement preceding the action plan, so that there's some high-level coherence to the document as a whole.

I like the sound of this. I'm already back-loading a lot of supporting data into appendices (list of role responsibilities, current unfilled duties and pending project requirements, and a salary budget analysis through 2014), so perhaps the justification of the steps could fall into another appendix, or alternately a later section.

If that justification is pulled out of the main body, then what's left is basically a list of steps to take and when they should be taken. I'll play around with this.

Also, you need an executive summary version. Think about it in power point terms. No more than 7 points in the page, preferrably 5 points or lines. No more than 11 words, preferrably 7 in the line.

And don't just say "services", explain WTF they are "email, payroll, inventory,etc".

Another thing that you could do to condense and clarify your proposal is to separate the points in the plan of action from their rationale. That would give you a short section up front with fairly direct steps to be taken, each of which can be phrased as straighforwardly as possible, and then longer prose explanations and justifications of each point. This may require a brief vision statement preceding the action plan, so that there's some high-level coherence to the document as a whole.

I like the sound of this. I'm already back-loading a lot of supporting data into appendices (list of role responsibilities, current unfilled duties and pending project requirements, and a salary budget analysis through 2014), so perhaps the justification of the steps could fall into another appendix, or alternately a later section.

If that justification is pulled out of the main body, then what's left is basically a list of steps to take and when they should be taken. I'll play around with this.

Also, you need an executive summary version. Think about it in power point terms. No more than 7 points in the page, preferrably 5 points or lines. No more than 11 words, preferrably 7 in the line.

And don't just say "services", explain WTF they are "email, payroll, inventory,etc".

Yes, I've already been asked to break down duties/systems to their specifics, as though the role descriptions were going to be handed to HR as a complete hiring template.

As far as Powerpoint/bullet points goes, that sort of approach was preemptively vetoed by my target audience. Although I do plan to open with an overview that functions as an executive summary, both the director and the EVP want to get (and read) an in-depth, detailed document. I've been told that this document itself must sell my vision; the presentation, it seems, will be more about examining specific details and fielding any questions or objections that might arise. So I'm trying to keep the document concise enough that nobody feels their time is being wasted (especially since both of them are easily annoyed by that), but beyond that, to take the time and space necessary to clearly lay out the plan.

Just remember; the PowerPoint is a reference, don't just read the slides. Talk about the points on the slides.

Please pay attention to Arbelac. I have been in presentations where I literally almost fell asleep because the powerpoint presenter just read from slides which were mainly a wall of text. I have only seen one person's powerpoint presentation that I actually appreciated the use of powerpoint. That person use the powerpoint as the outline and talked about the points in detail. The powerpoint became a tool that sat there in the background for reference and let the speaker shine through. Made for an engaging and powerful talk.

I've mentioned that I'm not allowed to use Powerpoint, so it'll just be me talking about the plan to people who've already read it in great detail. I don't yet know exactly what I want to say; that'll depend on what the paper ends up looking like.

Unrelated, LinkedIn is shouty and its timing is either bad or good. Late last week (after a different Boardroom thread), I updated the title for this job on my resume to read "Systems Administrator" because the general consensus seemed to be that titles didn't matter but it couldn't hurt to put what I do, rather than what's on my business card.

I found out about my boss leaving on Monday, and today LinkedIn advertised my new title to, presumably, all of my connections. Many of which work with me. I've already had a couple of "So does this mean your plan worked???" emails from people.

It's too late to undo this now, and I don't know whether it would either help or hurt much. Probably more relevant is the minor detail that yesterday's one phone interview and an offer (in which I wasn't interested) has turned into five calls (on different opportunities), two phone interviews, and one scheduled in-person interview for early next week. That last is for a job I would be strongly interested in, because it sounds like all the work I love, none of the current management drama, and 1.7x my current salary. They seem keen to identify the right candidate and have him (or her) start as soon as possible, too.

Which just makes me think again of how it wouldn't be possible for me to finish my existing projects in two weeks (if I got the offer and gave notice), much less enough time to document even half of what my successor would need to avoid having to puzzle things out from the ground up like I did.

I've mentioned that I'm not allowed to use Powerpoint, so it'll just be me talking about the plan to people who've already read it in great detail. I don't yet know exactly what I want to say; that'll depend on what the paper ends up looking like.

Sorry if I was unclear. Yes, they say they want a full plan. Give them that. But in the presentation, inevitably, there will be someone says "okay, give me the bottom line" "or sum it up for me" or "TL;DR" and that's when you bust out the short version:

B_O: "We need more people. We lose one more after X, we start picking which systems/services we let fail to keep the core running. Payroll, inventory, email, crm, accounting, etc. After that, you can guess what happens. "

exec: "How soon do we need to act?"

B_O: "Like, yesterday. Burnout is the norm now. Monthly OT is already beyond the salary of one person"

My point is that you should focus things tightly and have the executive summary version as well as the super summarized version of that. It depends on the personality of the executives involved, but if that one exec is THAT busy then you should have that version ready as well.

FWIW, it may be worthwhile for you to make a powerpoint just for yourself to practice your presentation for yourself, but to never use it. The stuff in a proper powerpoint would be rather like the old index cards for presentations of old.

Great advice, DM: I'll definitely plan for your short version conversation. Our actual situation is even more dire than what you projected; rather than choosing what systems/services we let fail if anyone else leaves, who leaves will determine that automatically, because the remaining people won't have the skills to keep the departed person's responsibilities going, even if they did have the time.

Also, the weekend of my 30th birthday is a hell of a time to be doing this...

Great advice, DM: I'll definitely plan for your short version conversation. Our actual situation is even more dire than what you projected; rather than choosing what systems/services we let fail if anyone else leaves, who leaves will determine that automatically, because the remaining people won't have the skills to keep the departed person's responsibilities going, even if they did have the time.

Also, the weekend of my 30th birthday is a hell of a time to be doing this...

I can think of worse birthday gifts than the opportunity you've got here. Got to close the deal, but you seem capable of doing so.

A specific request for advice:I've both been counseled and independently desire to avoid making any ultimatums, at any stage of whatever's going to happen. However, much of the short-term part of my "vision" involves giving the remaining staff the recognition (read: title and salary) that's in line with their actual role and responsibilities. These recognition steps are spread out over the next few months, and their order and timing is simple: each happens 1-2 months before the person being recognized plans to leave if it doesn't happen.

I think a bit of subtlety might serve you well. Perhaps suggest the need for a short-term compensation adjustment to directly recognize the additional work that will be required of the team, coupled with a "reward" amount for staying for a certain period of time (6mo, 1yr?)

I've done that with a few people working on a special project. At the outset, the company set aside a pot of stock and cash that was distributed to everyone who saw the project through. Each person on the team was also given a bonus along with each check to create a temporary salary bump.